I accidentally got drunk last night.<\/p>\n
The kind of drunk where you look at yourself in the mirror just before you pass out and even though you\u2019re all alone, you feel ashamed and kind of embarrassed. But I wasn\u2019t drinking because I was sad or anything; I was just so very much into<\/i> the album that was flowing out of my speakers that I couldn\u2019t stop guzzling beer. I was having my own little party right there in my living room. Dancing around, thinking about how I wished I been a teenager when The Smiths were still together, wondering if The Cure would be better off splitting up. You know\u2026important stuff like that. \u00a0<\/p>\n
As I stood there with a beer in my hand admiring the sleeve — simple, straightforward, black and white awesomeness — of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart\u2019s self-titled debut album I thought to myself, \u201cYou know, Self, if most pop music these days is just a musical tour through the band\u2019s own record collection — and it is — then pop criticism has, by necessity, become something very similar. For a shit-ton of rock critics, it\u2019s the name that influence game!\u201d Well I decided right then and there that for this here album, I wasn\u2019t going to play that game. No sir! <\/p>\n
I finished the beer in my hand and turned to go to the kitchen for another and that\u2019s when I tripped over a stack of records and CDs I\u2019d had out because earlier I\u2019d suddenly had the \u2013 drunken — desire to do some rearranging of my collection. I remained there on the carpet for a moment, face-planted on the floor, thankful the beer bottle I\u2019d had was empty, and I took stock of the scattered pile of CDs in front of me: The Strokes\u2019 Room On Fire<\/i>, some early Kings Of Leon, The Shins, The Smiths\u2019 Louder Than Bombs<\/i>, some Cure albums, a Stone Roses compilation, My Bloody Valentine\u2019s Loveless, <\/i>and The Jesus And Mary Chain\u2019s Psychocandy<\/i>. And do you know where my copy of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart<\/i> landed? Right smack dab there on top of that pile. <\/p>\n
Weird, eh?<\/p>\n
Anyway, back to not name-dropping influences and albums as a form of criticism; it\u2019d be totally easy to do that for The Pains of Being Pure At Heart\u2019s excellent<\/i> debut album, but let\u2019s not. That would be counterproductive and a waste of space on the page.<\/p>\n
To be certain, TPOBPAH\u2019s full-length debut is derivative. Very much so. But that\u2019s okay, because just about everything plaguing our radios, iPods, and stereos is derivative these days. At least TPOBPAH aren\u2019t trying to hide it. They\u2019ve fully embraced it. After a string of exciting, promising — and successful — singles and EPs, New York-based TPOBPAH have delivered on their promises and released nothing more than a good old fashioned indie-pop album.<\/p>\n
Guitars that are sometimes shimmery, sometimes fuzzy, but always controlled, smart, and sophisticated drown this album in a delicious early \u201890s college radio sound and make for a listening experience that is\u2026.well\u2026it\u2019s just plain fun. Although placing \u201cContender\u201d at the top of the play list might have been a misstep for an album-opener, it\u2019s a strong tune nonetheless and segues perfectly into \u201cCome Saturday\u201d where TPOBPAH really work the gimmicks with lines like \u201cI can\u2019t stand to see your picture, on the dresser where I left you. Another sunny day, and you\u2019re 80 miles away\u2026\u201d Ten tracks in all and just under thirty-five minutes, there\u2019s no filler here — shit, there wouldn\u2019t be room for filler anyway. \u201cYoung Adult Friction\u201d stands out among the rest and will undoubtedly be one of the best pop songs of 2009. \u201cThe Tenure Itch,\u201d \u201cStay Alive,\u201d and \u201cEverything With You\u201d flow into one another quickly and perfectly and lead up to the album\u2019s second strongest track \u201cA Teenager In Love\u201d where we find TPOBPAH fully embracing the genre with the refrain \u201cA teenager in love with Christ and heroin.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end what you get is thirty-five minutes of absolutely perfected, fine-tuned — totally derivative — and smart indie-pop. Even if The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are predictable at nearly every turn, what\u2019s wrong with that?<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s nice to break free of the exotic and just revisit the familiar. This is an exceedingly strong debut and I dare you not <\/i>to fall in love with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. <\/p>\n
Good luck. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":29773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8357],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41381","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41381"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}